With
him, as with the vast majority of men, logic is implicit, not
explicit: he reasons just as he digests his food in complete
ignorance of the intellectual and physiological processes which are
essential to the one operation and to the other. In short, to him
magic is always an art, never a science; the very idea of science
is lacking in his undeveloped mind. It is for the philosophic
student to trace the train of thought which underlies the
magician's practice; to draw out the few simple threads of
which the tangled skein is composed; to disengage the abstract
principles from their concrete applications; in short, to discern
the spurious science behind the bastard art.
If my analysis of the magician's logic is correct, its two great
principles turn out to be merely two different misapplications of
the association of ideas. Homoeopathic magic is founded on the
association of ideas by similarity: contagious magic is founded on
the association of ideas by contiguity. Homoeopathic magic commits
the mistake of assuming that things which resemble each other are
the same: contagious magic commits the mistake of assuming that
things which have once been in contact with each other are always in
contact.
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